A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

146.
the children--which she would perhaps have felt less if Grandoourt had
been as she had imagined him, a man susceptible to her charm and able
to be mastered by her so that she COtllJ have oontinued to !1nLke he.:::­
penances easy" 56 --fills her with a remorse which eats into her and.
forces her into an awareness of the rights of other people, She has
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come to "look at [he:J life as a debtll
and instead of shunning them,
to find comfort and surety in the discharge of quite simple duties,
"primary duties, \I 58 defined by her position as sister and daughter.
In strong contrast to Gl'lendolen, we see Deronda, equally adrift and
unbonded to the past, ~3ecretl'y
complaining that because of "the way in
which others had ordered his ••• life" he has not had the IIfull guidance
of primary duties." 59 The not knowing his parentage gives him a sense
of alienation and separateness; he struggles to establish for himself an
identity. The sympathy and understanding he shows for a vade variety of
human situations, far from giving him a sense of belonging, seem to reduce
his contaots with the world to a mere dilettanteism. George Eliot,
as too often with this character, chooses to "tell" us of his dilemma
rather than "show" it to us dramatically. Thus we see his problem in her
terms as when she says that "a too reflective and diffusive sympathy
was in danger of "paralysing in him that indignation against wrong and
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that selectness of fellowship which are the conditions of moral force."
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He is adrift and wandering, like a "yearning, disembodied spirit, II the
perfect exemplar of Feuerbach's description of a man who has no aim.
. ,
Feuerbach, in The Essence of Christianitl, states in George El~ot s
translation, that "he who has no aim, has no home, no sanctuary; aimlessness
is the greatest unha.ppiness. II In contrast with this he continues:
Ii
He who has an aim, an aim which is in itself true and essential, has,
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£2. ipso, a religion. II Deronda t s aimless state seems to indicate, in
embryonic form, the state of despair which leads some Existentialists,